Systems Management Institute recognizes that the need for innovative virtual-learning is becoming more acute as the trend toward global and more complex business challenges increases. This trend is fueled by both softskills complexity and the magnitude of the problems faced by corporate training departments. We have developed programs which focus on the bases of softskills competence and have developed professional certificates that promote the development of organization teams and their leaders.

The SMI Virtual-Learning Center offers a unique vision for improving professional performance by delivering programs which build the softskills and expertise of clients. For employers, our Virtual-Learning Center offers realistic, professional, task related programs that greatly enhance the contribution of employees. We developed our programs formed from the unique content derived from the rich global consulting and training experience of our company.

Through the support of the Systems Management Institute, our Virtual-Learning Center offers certified programs leading to enhanced competency in the difficult to master softskills. Our current Statement of Objectives highlights how the thinking of Dr. Newkirk benefits both clients and their organizations. Our mission emphasizes the need to leverage the consulting experience of our company by offering action-based programs especially designed to enhance softskill performance.

Approach to Learning Based on Practice

While some authorities have encouraged academic institutions to foster workplace skills in the college curriculum, the SMI Learning Center has captured the power of the World Wide Web to provide such programs to all people anywhere who have the use of a PC and access to the Internet. In agreement with leaders in business and education, we support the development of a common language of competency-based education. Our programs exemplify this commitment.

Unique to our approach in developing our learning programs, we move from consulting practice to content and then learning and to application. Rather than beginning with theory and textbooks to develop our programs, we use the powerful insights gained from the consulting assignments of Systems Management Institute over the last two decades to inform our course content. From the insights gained on these assignments, the SMI Learning Center developed programs to build the essential softskills and competencies of clients and refine management thinking and practice. Our programs further offer a solid learning experience grounded in the core professional disciplines as evidenced by our unique certificate programs.

SMI sponsors seminars, workshops, and courses to link theory with practice and empower the management of new paradigms in business. The culmination of these programs leads to Basic, Advanced, and Expert Certification in Professional Systems Management. Our virtual-learning and consulting services span several areas of expertise including softskills development, Corporate Board performance, and management & leadership effectiveness.

Softskills-Focused

The terms hardskills and softskills are paradoxical. They should be reversed. Why is it that hardskills are less challenging to master than the softskills? Usually because they have more to do with things than people. Things are easy, people are difficult. Since we focus on people, not things, we excel at enabling others to master the soft side of the workplace, the people side, through the mastery of professional softskills.

Departing from many technology training and education companies, the Systems Management Institute virtual-learning architecture focuses on softskills development. We are "softskills-focused." The SMI approach focuses on the design and selection of learning methodology. While our Learning Management System enables the learning capabilities of clients by linking learning to virtual-access, our approach results in the highest degree of service and client satisfaction.

Whether we are consulting one-on-one with an executive at the pinnacle of decision-making or working with a team, we minimize the risk of new training by aligning the virtual-learning approach to the unique environment of the client. We support each learning engagement with an experienced consultant and senior expert who focuses on the client, learning program, and contract.

Commitment to Professional Skills

Through our many years of consulting experience, we have found that a gap exists between campuses and the workplace. For too long now, colleges and private training organizations have neglected workplace skills. As a result, the essential skills and competencies that executives and managers desire in their employees have seriously eroded, if not completely disappeared. The SMI Learning Center fills this gap.

These skills and competencies include: managing self, communicating, managing people and tasks, and mobilizing innovation and change. Unfortunately, these competencies have become echoes of the past as schools and colleges focus on disciplinary or specialized learning while mostly ignoring the core competencies required for success in the workplace. SMI changes the trend.

Intellectual Capital Development Services

These are exciting times for innovative executives as they face the new opportunities offered by the challenges of postmodern business competition. Systems Management Institute enjoys discovering the opportunities hidden in these challenges. Moreover, we receive great satisfaction from sharing the wealth of our experience, knowledge, and insights with our clients as they leverage their challenges to capture the emerging opportunities for success.

SMI recognizes that the need to make the shift from the 20th to the 21st century is becoming more immediate as the trend toward global and more complex work teams increases. We have developed softskills-based programs and curricula that promote the development of innovative thinkers, executives, and leaders as professionals in the postmodern world marked by globalization.

Leadership Development and Virtual-Learning

In previous years, people accepted two factors as the criteria for professional success: (1) the ability to plan, organize, control, and allocate the resources entrusted by senior management, and (2) the ability to gain recognition and acknowledgment from senior management for any success achieved. In such an environment, people often equated success with luck.

Today, a dramatic revolution has altered our understanding of what one must do to be a successful manager. Associated with this revolution in management thought is an expansion in the language used to describe management practice. What executives formerly considered as good management practice is now looked upon as merely excellent clerkship. Leadership and innovation are the future!

The SMI response to this dynamic revolution in management wisdom leverages the power of virtual-learning to bring continuing education to anyone anywhere who has access to the convenience of the Internet. SMI provides direction and training to managers to help them assimilate this important development in employee training and development. SMI uses the convenience of the Internet to offer a positive path to increasing team performance by building intellectual capital in every organization. In this way, SMI enables executives to become effective leaders.

The Virtual-Learning Center reintroduces knowledge and skills that were previously known to simplify work-life but have recently become forgotten through the mad rush to employ advanced technologies in the quest for competitive leverage. In developing learning programs to expand the task knowledge and softskills of clients, our Virtual-Learning Center emphasizes that knowing what to do is more than half the battle in reducing work complexity. The right knowledge does make life easier.

Life-Long Learning

An important component of our softskills development focus is our commitment to life-long learning. Again and again, we have found that accomplished individuals have a hunger for learning that never diminishes. Whether it be in the field of problem solving, softskills enhancement, or pure knowledge acquisition, successful individuals continually seek to sharpen their intellects. For these individuals, competence is not an insult, it is the intimate attribute of their life. Through our Virtual-Learning Center, we offer life-long learning opportunities designed to enhance the softskills of clients. Our programs are more practical than theoretical and focus on doing.

We believe that task competencies: (a) are grounded in softskills; (b) exist along a continuum of levels; (c) start with relevant information; (d) exist in relation to specific tasks; (e) are improved by practice; (f) are measured by selective judgments of performance, and (g) satisfy a criterion of "good enough."

We believe that competence consists of general and specialized knowledge. While the specialized knowledge includes discipline-specific skills, the general knowledge includes managing self, communicating, managing people and tasks, and mobilizing innovation and change, the softskills. These core competencies form the common language of competence and serve as the core softskills for mastering the external world.

Results

Choosing us as your Virtual-Learning partner, you can expect to increase trust in the workplace, improve communications, and raise the levels of commitment and cooperation. You can expect our programs to improve executive and management performance within organization teams and develop involved employees to design creative solutions in mobilizing innovation and change.

Available Program Certifications

SMI is an innovative Internet-Oriented global learning company offering a large selection of certificates and courses in softskills development for executives, managers, and the teams they support. The SMI Virtual-Learning Center continually updates existing programs and adds new programs to serve the needs of clients and members of the Institute. While a full list of programs is available by logging on the Learning Management System, the certificates tab introduces a few of our most popular programs. Clients earn basic, advanced, or expert level certifications in several areas of professional study.